GTA V shipped 60 million copies, made piles of money for Take Two

Grand Theft Auto is still the king. We’re in the middle of that part of the year where companies do all their financial updates for investors, and now it’s Take Two’s turn. The publisher revealed that Grand Theft Auto V has shipped 60 million copies across all platforms.

Of course, shipped doesn’t mean bought, but I can promise you there aren’t 59 million copies of GTA V sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

While the game shipped originally back in 2013, Take Two has kept it in the spotlight with a 2014 release to the new consoles and a Spring 2015 release on PCs, ensuring that it keeps finding new customers in order to stay atop the charts of sites like YouTube.

Not only does Grand Theft Auto V keep selling well, but Grand Theft Auto Online continues to do well, too, with this holiday season bringing Take Two the highest revenue yet for the game, according to CEO Strauss Zelnick. The period also saw the highest number of players yet for GTA Online.

All of this has helped the publisher beat expectations in this most recent quarter. When Take Two releases a game like Grand Theft Auto V, there are high expectations for sales, and those taper off over time as investors expect seasons without mega-hit releases to be less profitable. The company used to lose money during these periods which, really, wasn’t so bad, because when they were making money, it was by the dump truck.

While analysts had expected revenues of $452.8 million, Take Two managed to pull in $486.8 million. Spending on things like GTA Online currency, downloadable content, and other online content grew by nearly half over last year, and digital revenue overall accounted for 44 percent of total revenue. Helping this along is a strong stable of other, non-GTA titles like NBA2K16, WWE2K16, and the Borderlands games.

For 2016, Take Two currently has XCOM 2 hitting on February 5, as well as Battleborn in May and Mafia III sometime in Fiscal Year 2017. And we’re keeping our fingers crossed that this is the year they announce Red Dead Redemption 2, or Red Dead Revisited, Red Dead Remastered, or something. I want to sit on a horse and shoot at guys in cowboy hats, is what I’m saying.

Regardless, Take Two is doing well, and as usual Grand Theft Auto has played a big role in that.

source:  GAMESBEAT